First published 2017
Marianne von Lingenfels stands in her crumbling Bavarian castle as Nazi Germany collapses around her. Her husband died in the failed plot to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, but she carries forward his promise to protect the wives of fallen conspirators. She rescues six-year-old Martin from a Nazi reeducation camp and travels with him through devastated Germany to find his mother Benita, who has fallen into the hands of Soviet soldiers in Berlin. Marianne also tracks down Ania and her two sons, now refugees in a displaced persons camp. She brings this fractured group back to her ancestral castle, believing their shared losses will bind them together. Instead, she discovers that survival has forced each woman to make compromises that shatter her black and white view of right and wrong. Dark secrets emerge that threaten to destroy the fragile family she has assembled. The three women must confront the choices they made before, during, and after the war.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, world-war-ii
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, moral-ambiguity
Setting: Bavaria, Germany, Berlin
Period: 1944, World War II
356 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: death, war